What are the Benefits of Vendor Managed Inventory to Pallet Customers?

Vendor managed inventory (VMI) has the potential to make any organization’s packing and shipping departments run much more efficiently. A VMI service provides monitoring and maintenance of your pallet inventory, taking the burden off your shoulders, while at the same time helping to ensure that you never run out of pallets – a hiccup that can halt your entire shipping process. 

How VMI Works

In short, when we provide VMI services for a customer, we schedule regular site visits to assess their pallet inventory. We then restock pallets that need to be replenished. When we monitor pallets, we send people to the warehouse at a point in time, say on a Friday. We count the pallets and if everything looks good we don’t return until Tuesday. However if a large shipment is ordered on short notice and the inventory is sent out on Saturday, you may find yourself out of pallets on Monday. It’s important to ensure your vendor is kept informed of any last minute fluctuations in your pallet inventory to ensure we can “top up” your inventory as needed.

How to Get the Most Value Out of Vendor Managed Inventory Services

For this reason, we encourage our VMI customers to share their production schedules with us. This takes trust between your company and JFR – a trust we hope we can build. A shared production schedule means that we know when those big shipments are ordered so we can anticipate and replenish your inventory accordingly. That means you are never inconvenienced by a low pallet supply and we do not have to process a rush order.

VMI can generate significant savings and efficiencies for your company. By taking care of your pallet inventory, it helps ensure that production does not have to wait for a shipment of pallets to arrive. The more information you can share about your shipment schedule, the better we will be able to supply an effective just-in-time pallet inventory service.